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Although there are 2.5 million unemployed people in Turkey, the country’s labor market suffers from a lack of employees with the right qualifications and the government has plans to address this problem through foreign skilled workers.

According to data from the Turkish Employment Organization (İŞKUR), employers in Turkey are seeking a total of 1,250 million workers in 2,957 professions.

The government plans to increase the share of foreign labor in Turkey by making a list of areas where there is a need; however, there are concerns that the influx of foreign workers into Turkey will not be limited to skilled workers and Turkey will turn into a haven for foreign workers.

The government also plans to attract Turkish immigrants to the country who have the qualifications sought by the Turkish labor market. For this, the necessary legal framework will be prepared for the foreign skilled workers and those of Turkish origin to be able to work in Turkey.

Cooperation among universities, public institutions, research centers and businesses will be developed to attract those workers to Turkey. In this regard, Turkey will promote its labor market abroad via its embassies.

The government’s plan aims to encourage foreign workers to be employed legally in the country while it aims to prevent illegal foreign workers in the Turkish labor market.

Due to the improvement in its economy over the past years, Turkey has become a popular destination for illegal foreign workers.

According to research conducted by some institutions, there are currently around 500,000 illegal foreign workers in Turkey. The state does not have any statistics about illegal workers. Inspectors from the Labor Ministry and police arrest illegal workers only upon complaints or during routine inspections at workplaces. Only a small number of illegal workers are caught in this way.

According to data from the Labor Ministry, 2,638 illegal workers were apprehended last year and the majority of those workers, 800, were from Georgia. Georgia was followed by Turkmenistan with 395 workers and then by Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Syria. It is predicted that most of the illegal workers in the country are from Syria.

Turkey is losing billions of lira from tax revenue due to illegal workers. Employers prefer to hire illegal workers because they want lower wages and they do not want social security. Illegal workers are employed mostly in child and patient care in addition to textile, agriculture and mining sectors in return for very low wages.

For instance, they are hired in Çukurova region in southern Turkey during summer to collect cotton and in the Black Sea region in fall to collect nuts. Illegal workers are generally hired as baby sitter or cleaner in big cities. They are preferred by employees because most of them are university graduates and request lower wages.

Turkish police sometimes arrest these people in operations carried out in big cities and deport them. However, most of these people return to Turkey on a tourism visa some time later.